Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

Strategies for understanding the meaning of words
One main issue is learning the meaning of new words. Most recent teaching
methods, such as task-based learning or communicative language teaching, have
relied either on the context to make sense of the word or on traditional tech-
niques such as pictures, explanation or translation into the students’ L1.
Conveying the meaning of new words is crucial to language teaching; for exam-
ple, it is the vital stage in Krashen’s natural approach, Dodson’s bilingual method
and the audio-visual method.
Suppose that someone says to you in a restaurant in Italy, ‘Scusi, è occupato
questo posto?’ You think you can work out everything in the sentence apart from
the word ‘posto’ (Excuse me, is this **** occupied?). What do you do?
Guess from the situation or context
The situation is sitting at a restaurant table; the person is a stranger – what could
the sentence be? ‘Are you waiting for somebody?’ ‘Can I borrow the mustard?’
‘Could I borrow this chair?’ ‘Can I sit down here?’ Looking at the probabilities you
decide that the word ‘posto’ must mean ‘seat’ in English. This is the natural
process of getting meaning for unknown words that we use all the time in our first 
language: if we encounter a new word in our reading, how often do we bother to
check precisely what it means in a dictionary? Checking back on a novel I have
just started, I discover that pages 1 and 2 had ‘baulks of sheer-sided soil’, ‘a severe
Learning and teaching vocabulary
58
1
2
3
4
5
die Schere
das Telefon
die Hand
das Flugzeug
der Mann
6
7
8
9
10
das Fahrrad
das 
der 
der Bleistift
das 
Fernsehapparat
Schüssel
Segelboot